Coyote Blog

A later study by (former IPCC) Dr Judith Curry has gone more into this [1]. And the report I referenced was even later. The comments on that page BTW make abundantly clear that scientists do not agree at all that the sea level rise is accelerating, and even if it is, if it's more than a minute amount. Most of the rise graphs focus around satellite measurement starting from 1993 which seem to show 3mm/year rise, and attaching these number to the graphs of sea level tide gauges is heavily disputed as scientific heresy. Additionally to get to that 3mm the satellite measurements had to be corrected, an action which was explicitly rejected by the recent Deltares report I referenced.
So, whatever people may think, acceleration is not a fact, and even the scientists that believe it, think it's very small. It's the alarmist media that blow it up to huge proportions.

As a side note: I have been following climate news closely since a year now, and I have to say, I'm noticing strange patterns, in for example picking starting dates for graphs. Read for a recent example this article[2]. And I have noticed many occurrences of this, including from Goddard (part of NASA), NOAA, but also other institutions. This makes me suspicious.

In my own country the Dutch Royal Meteorological Institute, was accused of erroneously changing past temperature data - supposedly to correct for changed sensor setups, to make heatwaves in the first half of the 20th century disappear. I read that report, and…

What has happened before will happen again. California had similar issues with mild winters and the reduced water associated with them back in the 1930s. [1][2] The difference now of course is that there are a great many more people there and a great many more farms.

The Bureau of Reclamation is pretty much at fault for the lack of water available for human consumption because of mismanagement and prices below the cost which encouraged over development of farming.

The current drought can likely be traced to changes in the Pacific Ocean dating to 1976 [3]. As in, we have more than time enough to see something was changing.

What can be done? Rationing won't solve it all. The states need to have more control over the water that the Bureau of Reclamation currently controls. They are in a far better position to understand their needs and cooperate amongst each other instead of using the weight of Washington politics to force a way.

First and foremost priorities have to be set and reasonable prices for the cost of water need to be assigned. Yes this will likely mean a reduction in farming but it is artificially propped up now by unrealistically low water prices. People also need to understand conservation and large lawns should either be restricted or the water use for such maintenance needs to be surcharged.

The key is better use of resources and not redirecting the problem which is more mismanagement than natural causes.

note, I haven't read much on site #2, but they…

I assume they're all comparable in the relevant attribute which is: if you make labor more expensive, employers will tend to consume less labor. Do you have some reason to think they're not comparable in that way? Do we need to find evidence of a general economic principle in EVERY locality for you to accept that it is, in fact, a general economic principle? Or is it sufficient that we have a strong intuitive argument and hundreds of studies showing it in action in various places and times? (And if you think the difference is "monopsony" as per Card/Kruger, how do you answer Boudreaux's questions I linked above?)

In the US, here's a plot of the correspondence between the teenage unemployment rate and recent large minimum wage rate hikes:

http://www.coyoteblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/minwage.jpg

Quote: "Each 10% increase in the minimum wage [since 2007] was accompanied by a decrease in employment of 1.2% for Hispanic males, 2.5% for white males and 6.5% for black males. When looking at hours worked, we saw a similar effect: Each 10% increase in the minimum wage reduced hours worked by 1.7% for Hispanic males, 3% for white males and 6.6% for black males.

The data clearly show a disproportionate loss of hours and employment for black young adults. Let's put these lost opportunities into context. Between 2007 and 2010, employment for 16- to 24-year-old black males fell by approximately 34,300 as a result of the recession; over the same time period, approximately…

> 30 years and the numbers have not significantly changed.

"How did you lose all the money?" "Slow at first, then very quickly."

> Companies based here are some of the most profitable in the world.

Cat's out of the bag. Most of the tools needed to form companies that are ridiculously profitable are online for anyone in the world to use (AWS). If they're not, the cloud providers are working tirelessly to put them there.

California was the hotbed of innovation due to concentrations of learning from higher institutions in tech. That's all distributed now.

> If as many people wanted to live in California as want to live in Texas, it would be cheaper to live here too.

Don't underestimate the crippling effects of powerful NIMBY's, over burdensome regulations and the CCC to dramatically increase cost. http://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2013/03/another-california-coastal-commission-horror-story.html

Also, Texas' population is increasing faster than California. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/05/22/texas-laps-california-in-job-and-population-growth/#3b6c33c473f3

2045 is when California loses it's title: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/07/texas-could-have-a-higher-population-than-california-in-2045.html

> the average California household also makes more

And get less: https://taxfoundation.org/real-value-100-each-state-2016

Which is why you now see a huge migration of middle class leaving.

I accept your point if you show me the evidence that supports your claim that we are eliminating jobs at a rate faster than before.

To give an example for you to think about, the machine gun eliminated more jobs for infantry than we have for cashiers. As veterans came home from WW II and 'mustered out' we provided the GI bill to train them in skills other than soldering. This provided an economy that transitioned a standard army to one tenth its previous size.

On the social justice side I am totally in favor of, and have advocated for, using tax payer money to provide the education and training to anyone who needs it to take a job that could use them. An example of how that has fallen down and needs our help was that the VA will not pay for veterans to learn to code[1]. That is a problem we can do something about.

What I categorically reject is the notion that there is any solid reasoning for trying to artificially create jobs that happen to meet existing skill sets. My favorite example of that failing spectacularly was the railroad union concession of having people work on trains in jobs that were no longer necessary[2].

[1] https://backchannel.com/thousands-of-veterans-want-to-learn-to-code-but-cant-7ed60c167a61

[2] http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/08/great_moments_i-4.html

Rail isn't very efficient in the United States--except for maybe Manhattan (even then MTA loses money).

Seattle should look at what's happening in other cities. For example, according to the LA Times, "The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region's largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating. Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county's only transit option." http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ridership-slump-20160127-story.html

Phoenix spent $1.4 billion on light rail and transit growth slowed (even though population growth did not). http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2016/01/phoenix-light-rail-continued-fail.html

The point is that rail is not on-demand. It is not flexible. It is not serve people individually. Rail does a wonderful job of taking larges numbers of people from dense living areas to dense working areas.

The future is not light rail. The future is much closer to the individualized, on-demand, flexible nature of Uber rather than the rigid, expensive, inflexible nature of rail.